novel ideas

7 September Books We’ve Been Waiting All Year For

Sorry to be a bummer and all, but summer is basically over. Labor Day is upon us and back-to-school (work, reality, the city) specials shout every day more loudly from newspaper ads and office-supply-store windows. Three-ring binders and polyester cardigans will soon be inescapable. Nature’s lush cool havens will soon become foreboding, ice-encased nightmares.

But September is the most anticipated month for books. Publishers have waited months to share these titles, but they wouldn’t dare want to get them confused with “beach reads,” though there’s nothing wrong with that. And, cheer up: it’s not too late to take them to the beach! When the first child of the season rolls in, the sands of summer will spill onto the tattered afghan and warmth will seem less far away.

Padgett Powell fans rejoice! Contemporary literature’s king of the Southern style—deadpan, absurd, lyrical, and often gleefully morose—publishes a new collection of short stories, the debut title on the already impressive Catapult Press and one of the year’s most anticipated titles. Powell, author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood, rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in forty-four short, surreal stories, like “Joplin and Dickens,” wherein Janis Joplin and Charles Dickens meet in elementary school. Read, obsessively re-read, and then carry around all fall in backpockets or tote bag as talismanic accessory advertising your smart-cool weirdness.

Elena Ferrante is a literary sensation, a star who by rejecting her fame has only stoked the fire of obsession that has consumed her fans. Who is she, really? Does it even matter? Her saga of two girls whose childhood friendship morphs into what’s being hailed as the most real depiction of the complexities of female friendship in literature, moments of mundacity and drama woven bleakly and beautifully together. It’s no wonder that the concluding novel in her Neapolitan novels is all the rage. To read her thoughts on anonymity and the conclusion of her masterful series, check out our two-part interview with her.

If you his name is unfamiliar to you, it will not remain so for long. The much beloved author, artist, and actor most famous for his cult favorite crime novels based loosely on infamous criminals—like the murderer of Gianni Versace, in Three Month Fever—has written a memoir that chronicles growing up as a gay man in New Hampshire, his days as on the Haight-Ashbury scene and in 70s-glam L.A. and his role in the art scene of 80s New York. Written from Cuba, where he’s lived on and off over the last decade, this is the neon vivid, radically intelligent, and inarguably sexy memoir of a cultural icon.

Another must-read memoir from an icon. Margo Jefferson, winner of a Pulitzer for criticism and the author of On Michael Jackson, gives us an accounting of not just her life, but through her girlhood memories in tandem her astoundingly sharp critical voice, a truly original history of the “black bourgeoisie” in Chicago. Jefferson is a national treasure and her memoir should be required reading across the country.

As bent on dissecting the moral rigidity of American dream and the leftover Eisenhower-era construct of middle-America suburbia as The Corrections, his latest novel—as usual, a tome—sets its sights on the illusion of personal and political ambition in an age of constant virtual connection. The protagonist this time, Pip, becomes involved in The Sunlight Project that, much like WikiLeaks, uncovers and exposes secrets online. Plus murder! The most far-reaching of his books, it’s also the most intimate; be prepared to hear Franzen called “the Dickens of the Internet age” a lot.

Who doesn’t love a fairy tale? Following news that his last novel, the Man Booker shortlisted The Sisters Brothers will be adapted into a movie (surely a delightful one), comes Patrick deWitt’s followup, a “reimagining” of the folk tale. When Lucien Minor, a sad young man living in the country, accepts a post working at a remote castle, he stumbles upon quite a few secrets in the village. Where is the castle’s master? Will he win the love of the village beauty, or lose her to a handsome, brutish soldier? Both a sweet and lovely folk tale and a satire of European story tropes, will true love conquer all?

Joy Williams’s writing, is, well, a joy to immerse yourself in. She is a legend among short-story writers and the publication of this collection is being billed as a literary event. Get a copy, for real. Most of the stories have appeared in past collections but are still as lovely and crisp as ever, perhaps more so with time, and there are 13 new ones to dig into. The type of collect that you’ll read over and over, and lend to a friend who will never give it back, but who could blame them?